It cuts both ways. If you wear your blue or higher belt, they will go harder wanting to tap you. But if you wear a white and tap advanced guys and then admit to being higher, it's like you're sandbagging.

When we get higher belts coming in, our instuctor likes them to show some of their favorite techniques. You can usually pick up a few things, especially from a good blue/purple or higher. Different schools usually means different styles.

If it comes from a legit instructor, they all honor the rank as far as I've seen. Now, respect for your skills - that you have to earn.

Thanks for all the responses.

Basically, what I wanted to know was if BJJ varied enough that changing schools/organisations would be like starting over from scratch. From what people have told me, it seems like there's enough commonality across the style and between teachers so that shouldn't be a problem.

I'm not hung up on the belt issue (I'll likely still be a white when I move), I just wanted to figure out whether or not the affiliation of local schools should be a major factor in which one I chose, as I'll probably be moving to another city within the next year or two.

I've moved a lot over the past 10 years for work and school, and had trouble carrying over FMA training when I did it, as FMA styles seem to vary a lot and it was difficult to find people teaching the same system from one city to another.

I also dabbled in _ing _un for a while when I was young and foolish, and each lineage would tell you that everyone else's _ing _un was useless. Ironically, they were all probably right about each other....

Glad to hear BJJ doesn't have that kind of BS going on, and prioritises functionality and skill over organizational politics, etc.

We're talking about bjj, not krotty.
Your belt will transfer and no one will give a **** unless you totally suck.

yeah but why should anyone care what your rank is anyways, outside of a tournament environment or in determining if you are experienced enough to teach (and even then rank doesn't equate teaching ability)?

yeah but why should anyone care what your rank is anyways, outside of a tournament environment or in determining if you are experienced enough to teach (and even then rank doesn't equate teaching ability)?

Because in BJJ rank actually is an indication of your skill. I know this is a foreign concept to people who come from TMA.

Conceptually it's a quick way for someone to know how to gauge your proficiency level and then how to tailor your learning from that. Alternatively it's a way of showing someone is qualified in a particular fashion (why get a college degree if ranking means nothing in society).

Last edited by Samfoo; 7/19/2006 6:24pm at .

Originally Posted by Osiris

Imagine if track was run like the martial arts community. While the winning teams would just sprint down the field, smoking the competition, you'd have a bunch of losers running around explaining how they can skip down the track just as fast. Never mind that it doesn't fucking work. Oh no, they're too fast for track. They run on the STREET.